91¶ÌÊÓƵ

Only some lichens live this way.
Some have separate lives.
But alga and lichen together
can disperse in wind,
sometimes find themselves
on tortoise shells in the Galapagos,
beetles in New Guinea,
inside a scarecrow’s raincoat.
Anywhere around here in the desert
lichens lie scattered on stones,
over earth, like sprays
of blue-gray gunshot,
or maroon constellations,
or yellow continents
on what was heaved and jumbled
when the earth was younger
and water broke apart cliffs
that turned these boulders loose
and smoothed pockets of earth
on which lichens with their sweet
metal smell now live on top of their
moss partners, protecting them
from light, while the moss makes
the food underneath
for hundreds of years.
Even though it’s strange
and no one can know much
about organisms this small,
it’s true they need each other,
attach forever, would never let go,
could easily spread a fire.
 

The only one that flowers is the purple trumpet.
The big pot’s center
is filling with skinny cilantro
while from pocket-lips around it,
sturdy baby basil, chives
like small green knives,
parsley curving; and
spreading like a good rumor,
mother-of-thyme.
The other pot just has
one spray of rosemary like a cowlick.
They are all at the edge
of my desk facing the tan hills,
the bald eagle pair sailing, dipping,
floating the wind-drifts all the way to the cottonwood
opposite us where they sit quietly and wait
like unopened letters.